of this party against Canterbury, which was in the hands of a monastic chapter.  The Bishop of Winchester, Henry of Blois, could well remember the struggle between Church and Crown under a far weaker king twenty six years before, when the bishops had wisely withdrawn from a contest where they had “seen swords unsheathed and knew it was no longer a joking matter, but a struggle of life and death,” and with the prudence born of long political experience he was for moderate counsels.  The Bishop of Chichester, Hilary, doubtless remembered the inconvenient part which Thomas as chancellor had played in his own trial a few years before, and might gladly recognize a poetic justice in seeing Thomas’s old doctrines of the supremacy of the State now applied to himself.  “Every plant,” he once said with taunting reference to the king’s part in Thomas’s election, “which my heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up.”  Thomas bitterly added another verse as he heard of the saying, “This man had among the brethren the place of Judas the traitor.”  There seems to have been a general impression that the position of the Primate was extremely critical, and he was besieged by advisers who urged submission, by messengers from pope and cardinals, by panic-stricken churchmen.  Beset on all sides the Primate wavered, and at last promised to swear obedience to the “customs of the kingdom.”  Immediately the king summoned prelates and barons to witness his submission, and the famous Council of Clarendon met for this purpose in 1164.

At Clarendon, however, after three days’ conference, the archbishop hesitated and hung back, he had grievously sinned in yielding, and he now refused the promised oath.  The bishops, finding courage in his firmness, declared themselves ready to follow him in his refusal.  At the news the fury of the king burst forth, and “he was as a madman in the eyes of those who stood by.”  The court broke into wild disorder, the servants of the king, “with faces more truculent than usual,” burst into the assembly of the prelates, and flinging aside their long cloaks, flourished their axes aloft, and threatened to strike them into the heads of the bishops.  Two nobles were sent to warn Thomas that orders for his death were already given unless he would submit.  The weeping bishops with lamentable voices besought him to save them; knights of the Hospital and the Temple from the king’s household knelt before him, sighing and pouring forth tears.  “In fear of death,” says one chronicler, he yielded.  “I am ready,” he said, “to keep the customs of the kingdom.”  Hardly were the words out of his mouth, when Henry commanded him to order the bishops to give the same promise, and again the Primate obeyed.  But the king was still unsatisfied.  His temper had risen in the discussions of the last few months; his determination was fixed that the matter should be settled once for all.  With the sharp decision of a keen and practical administrator, he ordered that the “customs of